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Retired Marine General Shares Lessons from Vietnam

April 08, 2009

When he was a young Marine
in 1964, Tom Draude was eager for his upcoming tour of duty in
Vietnam, anxious to join the U.S. effort to try and keep communism
from spreading to South Vietnam from North Vietnam. By the end of
the war, which lasted from 1957 to 1975, the young officer had a
much more complicated assessment of the war.

Today, as a retired Brigadier General, Draude considers it
important to pass along the lessons learned from American military
mistakes and political misperceptions from that time. “We
have to understand. That’s how you learn,” Draude said during his
guest lecture April 7 at Saint Leo’s main campus. (The event was
taped for video teleconferencing use.)

Draude is a longtime friend of Saint Leo University, having
served as a university trustee and former member of the board of
the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies. He is now president and
chief executive officer of the Marine Corps University Foundation,
a non-profit in Quantico, Va., that provides financial support for
the education of active Marines. He also teaches history.

Vet in Attendance The General’s talk at Saint Leo was both
historically detailed and warm and appreciative toward veterans and
active-duty armed forces members. Some in attendance, in fact, were
fellow Vietnam veterans, whom Draude asked to stand and be
recognized for their service.

Then he warned he didn’t expect his fellow vets would agree with
all he was about to say. Draude explained that every veteran’s view
of the war is influenced by the location and duration of duty. He
used photographs taken during the war to aid his retelling of his
three tours of duty. He also detailed key “turning points” in the
prosecution of the war, which he said included inflated reports of
military progress, an unclear mission, an unrelenting opponent
waging a guerilla war, and finally, “the breaking point of the U.S.
spirit.”

Society also made a mistake in blaming returning veterans for a
war that had become so unpopular, Draude said, by treating them
coldly, and shutting them out of job opportunities. The result was
that many didn’t want to talk about their service, even to family
and friends, he has discovered.

Americans have since learned to adopt a new attitude toward
veterans, Draude said. “You may disagree with the war, but you
don’t take it out on the warrior. So that’s a lesson I think we can
be proud of in America, but they were tough times for those who had
to go through it.”

Draude talking with a studentMany Americans still have time to
heal family rifts over Vietnam, and to encourage veterans from the
war to share their histories, he said, but he has seen cases where
families waited too long.

“For veterans, I say, tell your families what you did. Let them
know what you accomplished. I am so tired of going to a funeral for
one of my Marines and having his family say, ‘Gee, we never knew
the things he accomplished because he never talked about it.’ What
a tragedy that is. They never knew.”

Family members can help veterans open up, Draude said. “Just ask
questions …. An easy one to start with is, ‘What’s the
funniest thing that happened to you?’ Regardless of how bad things
got, funny things happen to you in the military, even in combat.
And that’s a good way to start. Don’t let their funeral be the time
that you find out the fantastic things they did for corps and
country.”